Awhile back, I had my 23rd birthday and was once again set forth into a deluge of thoughts concerning age, mortality, and the like. I'll be the first to admit that I'm really not that old yet, but it still gets the wheels turning in my mind. After all, I'm almost a quarter of a century now.

The feelings that I've been getting the most often are those of inferiority. Many times, I look around me and wonder where and why I fell behind so far. I have peers of the same age who are working in much higher paying jobs or continuing on in graduate school. The interesting thing is that many of my very close friends humble me the most in their accomplishments. That's not even including the people that I don't know.

A lot of times, I'll just be browsing around the internet at lunch, searching for sites to grab my interest and hold it for an extended period of time. Much of the most amazing work that I see is done by people that about my age, or even younger. There's nothing like hunting around the internet for awhile to make me realize that there's tons of other people out there doing what I am, and doing it much better.

It does bring on major feelings of inferiority, but I try not to let it weigh me down too much. Most of the time, I find myself coming around to one conclusion. In the past, making the most amount of money used to be one of my biggest driving forces. During college and continuing through the last several months, the bigger question has instead become, "am I happy?" Depending upon which hour of my life someone would ask me, the answer to that question is always varying. For the most part, though, I would have to say that I am. Like everyone (or perhaps even more than everyone), I have my ups and downs. I'm creating (with this site and with drawing and photography) at a constant rate and for the first time since college, I'm actually starting to maybe have a social life again. I'm not singing "zippity do da" all the time, but there's not a Gucci belt in my future, either.

back